Istanbul Airport

Not Verified | A modern and spacious airport. Being a new one, state of the art buildings, architecture, and decoration, most travellers were a bit confused meeting new everything in IST. That resulted in a degree of discomfort and a lot of effort walking here and there to find what they needed. Most of junior staff that passengers meet everywhere in IST speak their mother tongue only. It would help a lot if those in contact with passengers are offered courses in basic English, French, or Dutch language. A noticeable number of staff and employee were tense. Probably, the huge influx of passengers caused by Covid-19 pandemic and the huge volume of work created tension or aggrevated it. Both passengers and IST staff were under pressure. A relatively modest number of employees and staff at IST were really nice, calm, and helpful. On my way to the gates to board I requested assistance from those two young employees. They got two wheelchairs and made sure we were comfortable. Thank you Ihsan and Aysun. A good point was made by a Turkish Airlines staff at check in desk. She offered us taking our carry on bags with the check in luggage. That was a nice gesture especially with senior people freeing them from carrying bags throughout the layover hours. In our particular case it was almost 11 hours. Potable water is not available in the airport. The price of the smallest bottle in airport shops is unbelievably high.

Not Verified | I had the worst experience with this airport. I lost my phone in one of the airport bathrooms. I went to customer services and the lost and found office to ask about it, everyone was saying I don’t know and sent me to another office. For 2 hours I was walking around myself and I was pregnant and tired, finally a girl from one of the customer services told me to ask at the police office and here my suffering started again. There are no police officers that can speak English, only one understood what I wanted to say and helped me to find my phone, but there was a bigger problem that they refused to give me my phone immediately. I don’t know why and I waited again in the police office for 4 hours watching them laughing, eating and drinking tea. Their boss eventually came to help me get my phone after paying 20 USD. I don’t recommend this airport to anyone. If you forced to choose this airport for any reason, please stay close to your gate as the airport is so big. If you are traveling on Turkish Airlines they are making so many schedule changes so check your ticket every day before traveling.

✅ Trip Verified | Terrible experience at this newly built airport earlier today! Travelled from Cape Town, SA to London Heathrow with a transfer in Istanbul Airport. Although very modern, clean and very very large, the staff are atrocious, not helpful in any way and not friendly. I had bought some metal sculptures in SA, which were conviscated at security in Istanbul as apparently they were 'sharp'. We couldn't put them in our checked suitcases as we thought they were too fragile. I disputed it, and the security officer told me to backtrack through security and speak to the Turkish Airlines desk to get them to put it in hold luggage. After fighting back through the security lines, the man on the desk spoke terrible English, and simply said its not possible due to 'procedures' but wouldn't elaborate. So we then had to line up and go through security again with the end result, we lost our expensive art sculptures, and wasted lots of time through misinformation. To top it off we had to run across the airport to the gate, narrowly avoiding missing our flight, to find out that someone else in our travel party had brought a 2 litre bottle of water through security and they hadn't even noticed.

✅ Trip Verified | A fabulous 1.2 billion dollar airport that doesn’t have any wifi unless you purchase a SIM card for a phone number the airport can send you a text to get on their WiFi. Yes! So if you don’t have a local Turkish phone number, no WiFi! Ridiculous! We need easy and working WiFi traveling through your airport!

✅ Trip Verified | It's a terrible airport. Far too huge and badly managed. Due to the previous plane delay I had only a 1h transfer. I made it barely. Had to run all the way. The airport staff are completely unhelpful, some of them rude. The short connection point, which is supposed to help in this situation, was closed. Very traumatic experience, especially that no one cares at this airport.

Not Verified | We are really missing Ataturk Airport because it was central, you could easily travel via the metro and the bus. But this one is too huge and is far away from the city centre, on the Anatolian side you need to travel for almost 2 hours to reach the airport! You need to walk too many km's inside. If it was a shopping mall that's ok, but for an airport you need to use it! Time wasting and tiring experience.

Not Verified | I arrived into Istanbul Airport from Milan Airport in February 2020. We have spent at least 20 minutes for taxi and another 10 minutes to just get out of the plane. Then, for international arrivals, we needed to walk at pace for 20minutes to the passport control. There were enough signs to get us there, but unfortunately other than being enormous, the airport seems clean and neat (due to being new constructed). All staff were neat and friendly.

Not Verified | I’ve flown into and from this airport several times now and it’s safe to say it’s pretty ridiculous. WiFi is the worst in the world - good luck trying to connect to it with the code they never text you. It’s too large and inefficient. Getting from A to B is just immensely time consuming - even if transiting make sure you’ve got at least 2-3hrs transit time because your gate might be on the side of the planet they’ve built. Customer service is lacking. The queues at passport control are too long and there are always empty desks which means they can get more staff in if they really cared. Overall, yes it’s large and new and fancy with some good shops etc - but it doesn’t serve its actual purpose well. So it’s a failure.

Not Verified | No wheelchair available. We had 6 passengers with wheelchair-bound. To our surprise, there's only 1 wheelchair available and we had a transit to go to Jeddah. They won't allow wheelchair outside the gate. All those disabled family members had to walk almost 4 km with luggage. Worst experience ever.

✅ Trip Verified | The new Istanbul Airport is huge and well designed. It's busy even at midnight. There are plenty choices of shopping and dinning. There are more security screening counters for transit than the old airport so the queue is shorter. The signs are clear. Some airport staff, however, are inpatient and pay little attention to passengers requests.